TRAIL OF TERROR

Jihadis training in your neighborhood?

Investigator describes setup as infrastructure for attack

Bob Unruh joined WND in 2006 after nearly three decades with the Associated Press, as well as several Upper Midwest newspapers, where he covered everything from legislative battles and sports to tornadoes and homicidal survivalists. He is also a photographer whose scenic work has been used commercially.

He described for WND some of his visits to the camps, which have been located in New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Texas, Oklahoma Michigan, Colorado, California and Washington.

“The one that really gets you concerned is in Georgia,” he said. “You go down a road and all of a sudden it’s just woods, and there are two roads that go straight down to the camp. It’s dark because of the trees. And one of the roads is named Mecca and the other Medina.”

“If there ever was an infrastructure for terrorism, this is it,” he told WND.

He said the camps themselves are in remote areas with few neighbors, and mostly self-sufficient, such as having their own water supply and often food stores. They also are closed to outsiders, with the women sometimes taking off-campus jobs, but little other interaction.

“If you died there, the bury you there,” he said. “There are no permits from the Department of Health…”

A video has been created describing the investigation:

Campbell also said the camps he’s visited have a mosque and frequently the living conditions are “miserable.”

The locations are run by Muslims of the Americas Inc., a tax-exempt organization, and it has been directly linked by court documents to Jamaat ul-Fuqra. The organization operates communes of primarily black, American-born Muslims throughout the U.S. The investigation confirmed members commonly use aliases and intentional spelling variations of their names and routinely deny the existence of Jamaat ul-Fuqra.

The group openly recruits through various social service organizations in the U.S., including the prison system. Members live in compounds where they agree to abide by the laws of Jamaat ul-Fuqra, which are considered to be above local, state and federal authority.

U.S. authorities have probed the group for charges ranging from links to al-Qaida to laundering and funneling money into Pakistan for terrorist activities. The organization supports various terrorist groups operating in Pakistan and Kashmir, and follows Sheikh Mubarak Gilani.

He boasts of conducting “the most advanced training courses in Islamic military warfare.”

The jihadist organization is thought to be responsible for nearly 50 attacks on American soil, but the U.S. government refuses to list it among foreign terrorists.

In a recruitment video captured from Gilani’s “Soldiers of Allah,” Gilani states in English: “We are fighting to destroy the enemy. We are dealing with evil at its roots and its roots are America.”

Jamaat ul-Fuqra is thought to have been responsible for the beheading murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan.

Gilani’s American headquarters is in Hancock, N.Y., where training is provided to recruits who are later sent to Pakistan for more jihadist paramilitary training, according to law enforcement authorities.

A Justice Department report to law enforcement agencies, prepared in 2006, provides a glimpse into how long Jamaat ul-Fuqra or “Muslims of America” has been operating inside the U.S.: “Over the past two decades, a terrorist group known as Jamaat ul-Fuqra, or ‘Community of the Impoverished,’ has been linked to multiple murders, bombings and various other felonies throughout the United States and Canada.”

Gilani’s “communes” are described by law enforcement as “classically structured terrorist cells.”

As WND reported, a covert visit to a Jamaat ul-Fuqra encampment in upstate New York by the Northeast Intelligence Network found neighboring residents deeply concerned about military-style training taking place there but frustrated by the lack of attention from federal authorities.

Campbell told WND the compounds raise his concern because of their proximity in Georgia to a prison, in New York to a water supply and other such circumstances.

He said the information about the camps has come from law enforcement sources, from the organization’s own investigation, and, tellingly, from information from insiders who have left.